Josh Thompson and his Wagner College men's basketball teammates can't let down against FDU on Thursday

Wagner College small forward Josh Thompson, right, thinks the Seahawks are still improving and can reach the championship game of the upcoming NEC Tournament.Advance File Photo/Derek Alvez

Wagner’s Josh Thompson has seen this late-season, stretch-run business before.

The red-shirt senior understands better than most that in the Seahawks’ Northeast Conference all it takes is a berth in the conference tournament and three good days in March.

“Then you’re in the NCAA Tournament,” said the 6-5 Thompson, a one-time high school football star at New Jersey’s St. Augustine Prep, where he was pursued by pigskin programs like Penn State. “And I believe we haven’t even peaked yet. That we’re still getting better.”

Wagner heads to struggling FDU on Thursday to face a team on a 13-game losing skid and one that was blasted 89-46 at league-leading Robert Morris over the weekend.

It is the next to final game of Wagner’s regular season, with the finale coming up Saturday at Monmouth.

The Seahawks have already clinched one of the eight NEC playoff spots.

But the league is closely bunched that with only those two games remaining they could still finish anywhere from first to seventh.

Thompson, a starter at small forward in 20 games so far this season, and a grad school attendee working on an MBA in international business, sat out his first year on Grymes Hill when the Seahawks dropped an opening-round match-up to Mt. St. Mary’s in the conference tourney.

As a red-shirt sophomore, the Seahawks fell to Robert Morris in a 78-74 nail-biter in the opening round. And last season, the 23-year-old was part of the 25-win Wagner team that lost to Robert Morris in the tournament semis.

He believes this Wagner team can advance farther than the semis for the first time since Mike Deane’s 2005 No.6 seed knocked off the Nos. 3 and 1 on the way to an eventual 58-52 loss to FDU in the tourney championship.

'CONTINUITY AND FLOW'

“This year is different because I think that we are just beginning to really get some continuity, and flow,” he said, pointing to the 40 points off the bench in Sunday’s 94-92 defeat of LIU.

Most of those points came from a trio of two sophomores in Mario Moody (19 pts.), Marcus Burton (9) and freshman Dwaun Anderson (9).

“That game was played at a really high level by those guys,” said Thompson. “And we’re so talented that I think there’s still plenty of room to improve.”

The last time these two teams met on Jan. 5, Wagner defeated FDU68-55 in Spiro Center.

Point guard Kenny Ortiz went for 22 points that day, and the 6-7 Moody registered a 13 point/12 rebound double-double as an emergency starter filling in for an injured Jonathon Williams.

The goal right now is for the Seahawks to beat FDU on Thursday then win four more games.

The final game of that group would be the NEC conference championship scheduled for Tuesday, Mar. 12.

“I think we’re all on the same page, and guys understand what the stakes are,” said the most veteran member of the Seahawk team. “This is my last chance to play in the NCAAs, and I have high expectations. I’m excited to fill avoid that is still in me, and I think we can do it.”